Pic of the Day: Obama Eyes Libya in Brazil

March 20, 2011

President Obama’s aides often use Flickr, the photo-sharing website, to distribute pictures of backstage moments that reinforce the White House message. The White House just uploaded this photograph, snapped in Rio de Janeiro at 9:30 this morning, of Obama, Chief of Staff Bill Daley and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon on a conference call about military operations in Libya.

(On the other end of the line, according to the Flickr post, were Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, Deputy National Security Advisor Denis McDonaugh and Gen. Carter Ham.)

Early headlines from this trip note the focus on Libya—"Obama Visits Brazil with Libya on His Mind" (Washington Post), "Obama’s Brazil Visit Overshadowed by Libya" (NPR). And it’s not as if Washington is a better place to talk on the phone than Rio. Understandably, the White House wants to avoid any perception that Obama’s eye is off the ball. Still, the other images coming from his trip today show Obama kicking a soccer ball with Brazilian children, which is sure to trigger some conservative fauxtrage.

Ari MelberTwitterAri Melber is The Nation's Net movement correspondent, covering politics, law, public policy and new media, and a regular contributor to the magazine's blog. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he was an editor of the Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy.
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Melber is also an attorney, a columnist for Politico and a contributing editor at techPresident, a nonpartisan website covering technology’s impact on democracy. During the 2008 general election, he traveled with the Obama Campaign on special assignment for The Washington Independent.
He previously served as a Legislative Aide in the US Senate and as a national staff member of the 2004 John Kerry Presidential Campaign.
As a commentator on public affairs, Melber frequently speaks on national television and radio, including including appearances on NBC, CNBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, C-SPAN, MSNBC, Bloomberg News, FOX News, and NPR, on programs such as “The Today Show,” “American Morning,” “Washington Journal,” “Power Lunch,” "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell," "The Joy Behar Show," “The Dylan Ratigan Show,” and “The Daily Rundown,” among others. Melber has also been a featured speaker at Harvard, Oxford, Yale, Columbia, NYU, The Center for American Progress and many other institutions. He has contributed chapters or essays to the books “America Now,” (St. Martins, 2009), “At Issue: Affirmative Action,” (Cengage, 2009), and “MoveOn’s 50 Ways to Love Your Country,” (Inner Ocean Publishing, 2004). His reporting has been cited by a wide range of news organizations, academic journals and nonfiction books, including the The Washington Post, The New York Times, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, FOX News, National Review Online, The New England Journal of Medicine and Boston University Law Review. He is a member of the American Constitution Society, he serves on the advisory board of the Roosevelt Institute and lives in Manhattan.